Heart Conditions in Children – A Brief Outlook

Heart failure has become the most common reason behind the ever increasing mortality rates. There are many reasons behind coronary heart ailments, ranging from hereditary patterns to bad habits like smoking and over eating.

As far as the adults go, this condition is understandable. However, the emergence of these ailments in children can be extremely dangerous and is something which is purely a result of bad genes, more commonly known as ‘Congenital heart diseases’. In fact, the heart problems exceed all other types of heath issues due to congeniality.

According to various researches, the number of children which get affected from congenital heart conditions range from 4 to 9 in a 1000 and nearly 1.5 million cases of children having this condition are reported each year.

What are the types of these heart conditions?

Congenital heart conditionsin children can be cyanotic or non-cyanotic. Cyanotic conditions are ones in which the infant appears blue, because of deoxygenated blood bypassing the lungs and entering the systemic circulation. This reason behind this can be right-to-left or bidirectional shunting, or malposition of the great arteries. Non-cyanotic conditions involve left to right shunting and normally result in septal defects.

Major reasons behind heart conditions in children

Mothers are more prone to be the cause of this disease in children as compared to fathers;consumption of alcohol or drugs having toxins like lithium by mothers isa major triggerin this regard. Maternal diabetes mellitus and maternal phenylketonuria also increase the risk of these congenial diseases, which can also be caused by the occurrence of intrauterine infection such as rubella during pregnancy.

The encouraging part about these heart conditions is that they can be predicted well before pregnancy, and there are trusted procedures – some of them quite complex – which ensure that the new born can overcome these issues and go on to live a complete and healthy life.